birgel 2002

Verba et Litterre:
Explorations in Germanic Languages
and German Literature
Essays in Honor of Albert L. Lloyd
EDITED BY
ALFRED R. WEDEL
and
HANs-JbRG B USCH
Linguatext, Ltd.
Newark, Delaware
-
Copyright © 2002 by Linguatext, Ltd.
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ISBN:
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Das Doppelte Lottchen.
From Munich to Napa Valley
FRANZ A. BIRGEL
I
n So wares wirklich: Der deutsche Nachkriegsjilm, Manfred Barthel
reports on a curious event during the summer of 1979: there-release
of Josef von Baky's 1950 film Das doppelte Lottchen, adapted for the
screen by Erich Kastner from his 1949 novel of the same name. 1 This
seems like an unusual film to be shown in German theaters twenty-nine
years after its original premiere. It is quite understandable that this delightful and sentimental film should be popular during its release in
1950 and one year later win the first German film prizes for production,
screenplay, and direction. But young and old standing in line to see this
relatively low-budget, black-and-white film in 1979, the year of Superman and Schulmadchenreport 12? At a time when the socially critical New German Cinema was at its peak? Even Ulrich Gregor, an avid
supporter of the Oberhausen generation and the New German Cinema
gave Das doppelte Lottchen a positive assessment, writing in 1980:
"where one expects naive or old-fashioned, if not very petit-bourgeois,
outdated rubbish, one experiences instead a refreshing, cheerful film,
which even today radiates a special charm."2 Now that the so-called
New German Cinema has become a thing of the past, now that film
scholars have learned to take the polemics of the Oberhausen Generation with multiple grains of salt, they are gradually allowing themselves
1
Manfred Barthel, So war es wirklich: Der deutsche Nachkriegsjilm (Munich and Berlin: Herbig, I 986), 279. See also the collection of positive reviews
from I 951 and later ones after the re-release of the film in Elisabeth LutzKopp, "Nur wer Kind bleibt ... "-Erich Kiistner-Verfilmungen (Frankfurt:
Bundesverband Jugend und Film, 1993), 97-I05.
2
Ulrich Gregor, "Der deutsche Film seit 195 I im Spiegel des Deutschen
Filmpreises," in Deutscher Filmpreis 1951-1980, 12, reprinted in Lutz-Kopp,
102. (Translations of German quotations are by the author.)
180
DAS DOPPELTE LOTTCHEN
FRANZ A. BIRGEL
to admit that some of Opa's and Papa's films were not really that bad.
Obviously lacking the social and political orientation of the New German Cinema, Das doppelte Lottchen can, however, be read symptomatically as a film reflecting the traumas and concerns of post-war
Germany.
.
· h
The basic story line is familiar. The opemng. se~t~ence sho~s Enc
Kastner narrating the beginning of the novel, mvitmg the VIewe~. to
enter the fictitious mountain village of Seebiihl on Lake Buhl.
Throughout the film, his voice is heard off-screen .commenti~g ~n the
action. The next shot is of an idyllic Alpine lake with mountams m the
distance, a scene anticipating the beginning of almost ev~~ Heimatfilm
made during the 1950s. Kastner tells the viewers that this IS n?t an orphanage, but rather a summer resort for girls. Ten-~ear old Lmse Palfy
from Vienna is already at the camp when the bus bnngs a ne~ gro~p of
girls, one of whom looks exactly like Luise. The only physi~al ~Iffer­
ence between Luise and the new girl, Lotte Korner from Mum~h, IS t~at
the former has long golden locks and the latter has tigh~ly ?rmded pigtails; however, emotionally, they are quite different: Lm~~ Is pampered
and spoiled, whereas the timid Lotte is so serious and dihgent that her
mother sent her to camp with the specific intention that she would learn
to be a child again. Initial animosities between the two are soon overcome, and they discover that they are identical twins separated seven
years ago. The two girls hatch a plan whereby each on~ would. get. to
know the other parent and eventually reunite the family. Switchmg
places, Luise goes to her mother in Munich, and ~otte goes to her composer-conductor-father in Vienna ..Nu~e~ous episodes ~re, pre~ented,
which threaten to reveal their true Identities, such as Lmse s failed attempt to cook for her mother in Munich, and Lo~e, in Vienna, having
to eat piles of palatschinken, Luise's .favorite dish, "":hen she would
prefer a veal schnitzel or goulash. As m numerous Hezmatfilr:ze of the
period, such as Griin ist die Heide (1951 ), young Lott~ fills m for the
missing mother by taking care of the father's domest~c needs. In her
naivete, she attempts to use her girlish femininity to dnve a wedge between her father and his latest flame, Irene Gerlach. Lotte goes so far as
to visit Fraulein Gerlach in order to forbid her from marrying her father. Fearing that her daring effort has been unsuccessful, Lotte su~fers
an emotional and physical collapse. Eventually, the mo:her and sist~r
come to Vienna; the parents are reunited, and the father IS cured of h~s
self-indulgence. Following Lotte's suggestion, he ev~n exchanges his
combination music studio and bachelor pad on the Rmgstrasse for the
artist's room next door to the family's apartment so that he can work
181
closer to his family. And the mother, obviously, gives up her career and
moves to Vienna. Yet it is less a rekindled romance between father and
mother, which brings them together again, but rather, Lotte's devotion
which leads the self-absorbed father to realize his paternal obligations.
Erich Kastner's clever but improbable premise for the Das doppelte Lottchen proved to be so appealing that it inspired five remakes
for the cinema and three television sequels. Even before filming began,
Das doppelte Lottchen received a lot of media attention in Germany.
Part of the pre-production publicity campaign was the nation-wide
sear~h for twins to play the roles of Lotte and Luise. Not only from
Mumch, but from all of Germany, mothers came with twin daughters in
to~. As Curt Riess reports the events, every mother thought that her
twm daughters were the ideal girls for the film because they were the
prettiest, nicest, and possessed the most acting talent. Erich Kastner
later stated that he had the idea of two identical girls who could look so
much alike that they could be mistaken for one another, but each of
~hom had a different temperament and character, which they exchange
m the course of the film. Kastner believed such a pair could not be
found because they existed only in his imagination. The choice was
eventually narrowed to 120 pairs of twins, and finally Isa and Jutta
Gunther were chosen for the roles. Kastner discovered during the filming that the two girls actually changed characters as he had conceived
it, and he was pleased to see how his imagination and reality intertwined.3
Although made in 1950, Das doppelte Lottchen shows no images
of ruined cities, no soldiers returning from captivity, no men on
crutches, no occupation troops, and no housing shortage, only a shortage of w~ll-lighted studios for the artist next door. The viewer is presented With what appears to be the positive side of life in the early
years of the economic miracle. A closer examination, however, reveals
that something is wrong with this view. A film from 1950 without any
allusion to the war? No reference to a border between Germany and
Austria? No mention of alimony or child-support payments? The film's
historical and geographical indicators actually hint at a period between
the Anschluj3 and the end of the Second World War.
A brief look at Kastner's career during the Third Reich may answer these questions. The Neukollner Tageblatt of May 12, 1933, re3
Curt Riess, Das Gab's nur einmaf: Der deutsche Film nach 1945 (Vienna and Munich: Molden, 1977), 5: 88-90.
FRANZ A. BIRGEL
DAS DOPPELTE LOTTCHEN
182
ports how, during the book burnings, nine voices called out the ~easons
why works of specific authors had to be burned. The ~ec?n? vmce proclaimed: "Against decadence and moral decay! For disciplme ~~d mothe wntmgs of
rality in the family and the state. I assign to the flame_s
4
Heinrich Mann, Ernst Glaeser and Erich Kastner." Six ~ays later, the
Miinchener Neueste Nachrichten reported on the blacklist of a~thors
who were to be removed from public libraries. With the exceptiOn
of
5
Emil und die Detektive, all of Kastner's writings were banned. Catego6
rized as "undesired and politically unreliable," he was at first only
permitted to have his works publish~d outside of Germany. In Dec~m­
ber 1934, Kastner was briefly taken mto custody for allegedly publishing subversive works abroad and h~d _his bank acc_ount frozen f~r one
year. The Gestapo arrested him agam m 1937 and mterrogated him for
7
three hours in order to intimidate him. In every country conquered by
German troops his books became banned.
.
.
The official Nazi attitude toward his works was, at times,_ ambiV~lent and the censoring of his works not well orchestrated. Wh~le all his
literary works, including Emil und die Dete~tive, were f?rbidden b~
spring 1936, the film version of Emil played I~ Ge~an cmemas un~Il
1937. Because the country needed hard currencies, Kastner was permitted to sell his film rights abroad, in a sense, making him an ambassador
of German culture. In 1938 MGM adapted Drei Manner im Schnee as
Paradise for Three starring Frank Morgan, Robert Young and Mary
Astor. In late 1941: Kastner was permitted to write the screenplay for
Ufa's mammoth production of Miinchhausen, ?irected by J~sef ~-on
Baky, and in early 1942 he co-authored the scnpt for the H~mz Ruhmann film Jch vertraue dir meine Frau an. In a letter to his mothe~~
Kastner writes on November 29, 1941, "G[oebbels] approved the film_
Miinchhausen. Whether Goebbels had at that time agree~ to permit
Kastner to work as screenwriter of the film is doubtful, smce h.e rejected the author's application for membership in the Reichsschrifttum-
4
Joseph Wulf, Literatur und Dichtung im Dritten Reich (Reinbek bei
Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1966), 49.
5
Wulf, 65.
.
6 Erich Kastner: Leben und Werk. Texts by Erich Kastner and Lomselotte
Enderle, 2nd ed. (Munich: Goethe Institut, 1966), 11.
.
.
7 Franz Josef Gortz and Hans Sarkowicz, Erich Kastner. Eine Bwgraphze
(Munich: Piper, 1998), 188 and 214.
183
8
skammer on December 29, 1941. Reports vary as to who interceded on
Ka~tner's behalf, all_owing him to work on Miinchhausen. According to
Lmselotte Enderle, It was Eberhard Schmidt, an Ufa production director.9 According to other reports, it was Fritz Hippler, director of the
infamous Der ewige Jude, and at that time, Reichsfilmintendant and
head of the film division in the propaganda ministry. 10
Goebbels wanted to spare no costs on Miinchhausen, which was
being planned to celebrate Ufa's 25 1h anniversary, and because he
wanted the best possible authors to work on the screenplay, he was
will in~ to overlook their political standing. 11 A requirement for writing
the scnpt was membership in the Reichsschrifttumskammer, and Goebbels granted Kastner a special approval, provided the author use a
pseudonym. When the filming was completed in December 1942, however, Hitler reportedly went into a rage when he discovered that Kastner had written the script. In January 1943, Goebbels again had him
banned from working in the film industry and prohibited him from publishing at home and abroad. 12 Miinchhausen had its premiere on March
5, 1943, but the original film credits list neither Kastner's name nor his
pseudonym. 13 (Kastner's nom de plume Berthold Burger evokes not
only Gottfried August Burger, who had written many of the Miinchhausen stories, but also Bertold Brecht, whose works were banned and
who was living in exile.)
Most scholars agree that Kastner had already written the film
treatment for Das doppelte Lottchen in 1942, when he suggested making _the film to von Baky, but since the author was blacklisted again, the
proJect was abandoned. The exact completion date of the screenplay is
unknown, since the theme of twin sisters preoccupied him for several
8
Gortz and Sarkowicz, 228.
Erich Kastner: Leben und Werk 12· Gortz and Sarkowicz 227
10
.
.
'
'
'
•
Rtess, 3: 171; Fehx Moeller, Der Filmminister: Goebbels und der Film
in Dritten Reich (Berlin: Henschel, 1998), 128; Eric Rentschler, The Ministry of
Illusion: Nazi Cinema and Its Afterl!fe (Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 1996), 37677; Gortz and Sarkowicz, 227-28. Hippler later claimed that one of the reasons
why he was relieved of his position and sent to the front was because he had
allowed Kastner to work on Miinchhausen. The real cause for Hippler's dismissal was apparently incompetence. Moeller, 128.
11
Riess, 3:171-72.
12
Gortz and Sarkowicz, 234-35.
13
Rentschler, 377.
9
185
DAS DOPPELTE LOTTCHEN
FRANZ A. BIRGEL
years. In 1937 he offered 201h Century Fox a treatment for a film with
Shirley Temple in a double role. 14 It is plausible that a reworked version of the story, entitled Das grof3e Geheimnis, was the completed
script for Das doppelte Lotte hen .15 If the screenplay wa~ alrea~y. finished before 1945, and Kastner, without making any maJor revisiOns,
used it for the film in 1950, this would explain the film's lack of specific reference's to post-war life. Others think that after the wa~, he reworked the story of Das doppelte Lottchen into a novel, which was
16
published in 1949 and became the basis for the filmscript.
In the late 1940s and early 50s, however, the story gained new
meaning, tapped into the collective consciousness of the ti~ne, and ~e­
came more than a film about the effects of divorce on children. Fntz
Gottler argues that "the children's films of these years most strongly
express the trauma of the period." 17 Between the Second 'Yorld ~ar
and 1956 when the last German POWs returned from Russian captivity, num~rous disrupted families longed to be reunited. Unlike other
films, which explicitly depict the crisis of masculinity during the pos~­
war period, here the absent or morally and physically broke~ male IS
treated obliquely. The husband-father is a self-absorbed, sel~-mdulgent
composer and conductor who split the twins because the crymg of two
infants disn1pted his creative energies. Das doppelte Lottc~en not o~ly
reflects personal longing for intact families, but it is also m tune "':Ith
official government policy during the period of post-war reconstructiOn
and national regeneration. During the late 1940s, little over one half of
the West German population lived in intact families. As Heide Fehren-
bach has pointed out in her exhaustive study of Die Siinderin and its
reception, not only Adenauer's CDU and the Catholic Church, but also
the SPD and the FDP linked the success of reconstruction to the renewal of the family structure. The family became the basic building
block of the new democratic political order. 18 In the words of Fehrenbach, Das doppelte Lottchen "leads us on a fantastic journey from an
untouched, scenic Heimat to the reconstructed security of Heim." 19
In an interview regarding his film Heimat, Edgar Reitz commented
on how films about families always arouse the interests of viewers: "I
am amazed at how effective the family is as a narrative element. As
soon as the family is the connecting element, there is great attentiveness on the part of the viewer, even in a world like ours in which the
family as an institution is endangered." 20 Das doppelte Lottchen not
only stood at the beginning of a wave of family films, but also set the
standard for a series of films about children either being reunited with
their parents or finding a home within a newly constituted family: in
Toxi (1952), the black GI father returns years later to take his Germanborn daughter to America; in Rosen-Resli (1954), an orphaned Christine Kaufmann brings two people together who adopt her, and in Laj3
die Sonne wieder scheinen (1955), Cornelia Froboess, then known as
"die kleine Cornelia," unites the man who had illegally adopted her
with her biological mother who had lost her ten years ago in the chaos
of the war. 21 Aware of this tendency, this longing for intact families,
Carl Froelich renamed his unsuccessful Drei Madchen spinnen into
Mutti muj3 heiraten-one wonders whether the verb muj3 at that time
had an ambiguous meaning. Ilse Kubaschewski, head of GloriaVerleih, renamed R.A. Stemmle's unsuccessful1954 Austrian filmDas
Licht der Liebe: for release in Germany, it bore the title Wenn du noch
eine Mutter hast. As Barthel has pointed out, mama and papa became
dueling titles: as a pendant to Mutti muj3 heiraten came Vater braucht
eine Frau (1952); in response to Grete Weiser's Meine Kinder und ich
184
14 In September 1942, Ufa planned a film with Jenny Jugo in a doub~e
role for which Kastner was to write the screenplay. In an attempt to avoid
working on this project, Kastner argued that he needed to see Two-Faced
Woman with Greta Garbo in order to avoid any possible later accusations of
plagiarism because of similarities with that film. To his surprise, he, Jenny
Jugo, and an Ufa representative were flown to Switzerland for a private screening of the film in MGM's Zurich offfice. Gortz and Sarkowicz, 233, and Ingo
Tornow Erich Kastner und der Film (Munich: Miinchener Stadtbibliothek Am
GasteiglVerlagsbuchhandlung Filmland Presse, 1987), 9.
15
Gortz and Sarkowicz, 233.
16
Tornow, 43.
17 Fritz Gottler, "Westdeutscher Nachkriegsfilm. Land der Vater,'' in
Geschichte des deutschen Films, ed. Wolfgang Jacobsen, Anton Kaes, and
Hans Helmut Prinzler (Stuttgart and Weimar: Metzler, 1993), 190.
18
Heide Fehrenbach, Cinema in Democratizing Germany. Reconstructing
National Identity after Hitler (Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1995), 92117.
19
Fehrenbach, 159.
2
Franz A. Birgel, "You Can Go Home Again: An Interview with Edgar
Reitz" (Regarding the film Heimat), Film Quarterly 39. 4 (Summer 1986): I 0.
21
Gerhard Bliersbach, So griin war die Heide ... (Weinheim and Basle:
Beltz, 1989), 156.
°
187
DAS DOPPELTE LOTTCHEN
FRANZ A. BIRGEL
(1955) came Heinz Riihmann in Wenn der Vater mit dem Solme (1955),
and the 1957 film Vater, w1ser bestes Stuck was answered one year
later with Jst Mama nichtfabelhaft? 22 By 1956, however, the genre had
pretty much run its course in Gennany. Partly due to the influence of
American pop culture, in particular, the rebellious James Dean, Marlon
Brando's Wild One, as well as rock'n'roll music, the ideal German
families became dysfunctional; the angelic young children had gotten
older and turned into the Halbstarken.
Within a year of its German publication in 1949, ap English translation of the novel Das doppelte Lottchen appeared, but in the journey
across the Atlantic, the names were reversed. 23 In the United States, the
novel was given the title Lisa and Lottie, and in England, it was Lottie
and Lisa. (Perhaps Lisa's name came first because Lottie is a less
common American name.) Between 1949 and 1965, the novel Das
doppelte Lottchen was translated into twenty-two languages.
It did not take long for foreign film adaptations of to be made. The
first of these was Hibari no komori-uta (literally translated as "The
Lullaby of the Lark"), a Japanese musical production from 1952, directed by Koji Shima, and starring a child singing star in the double
role. The British version, Twice Upon a Time ( 1954 ), followed, directed by Emeric Pressburger, with whom Kastner had co-authored
several scripts in the early 1930s before Pressburger was forced to emigrate. This adaptation received mostly negative reviews, and like the
Japanese version was not shown in Germany.
In 1961 came Walt Disney's The Parent Trap (1961) with Hayley
Mills and Hayley Mills, which was released in Germany as Die Vermii.hlung ihrer Eltern geben bekannt .. .. Although Disney provided
family entertainment for the baby boomers' childhood years, his first
Parent Trap was really one of many low-budget, commercially successful, live-action films from the early 1960s which supported the
production of the more expensive and commercially less successful
animated films. 24 During the 1980s, Disney made three TV sequels
with an adult Hayley Mills playing twin mothers: in 1986 The Parent
Trap II, which was released in Germany only as a video with the title
Nikki und Mary-die 5-Minuten Ehe, and in 1989 came both The Parent Trap Ill and The Parent Trap Hawaiian Honeymoon, also known as
The Parent Trap IV. In 1998, the Disney studios remade The Parent
Trap for cinematic release. In the early 1990s, there was an animated
Japanese television series based on Das doppelte Lottchen, and, in
1993, Joseph Vilsmaier updated Das doppelte Lottchen in Germany
under the title Charlie und Louise.
In the two adaptations of the film for American theater audiences,
numerous changes were made, whereby the striking differences between the original German and the two Disney versions reflect both the
cultural differences between the two countries as well as the social
changes which have taken place in the United States between 1961 and
1998. Lotte's psychosomatic collapse in the original Gennan film
stresses the effect of her father's planned remarriage on her. The 1950
film often runs the risk of becoming overly sentimental, something
which is mitigated in the novel through Kastner's humor and irony.
Instead of sentimentalism, the first Parent Trap resorts to slapstick humor, including a cake fight. It minimizes the problem of divorce-in
fact, the word "divorce" is never used; instead, the parents are "separated." Another major difference is that the twins in the German version are innocent, ten-year old girls who celebrate their eleventh birthday toward the end of the film, while in the two Disney versions they
are more animated, exuberant, precocious pre-teens; to be precise, the
Hayley Mills' characters Sharon and Susan are already thirteen years
old.
Whereas the initial antagonism between the two girls in the German film reaches its violent highpoint when Luise kicks Lotte under the
table, the Disney versions rejoice in showing the competitiveness of the
girls and the nasty pranks they play on one another and on the father's
fiancee, pranks which get nastier in the latest film. If in 1961, the sight
of a lizard scares the fiancee, in 1998, the episode is intensified by having the lizard crawl into her mouth. She also becomes greedier and
more vicious; in the final version, the girls refer to her as Cruela de
Ville, one of several intertextual references to other Disney films. The
dichotomy of poor, working mother and rich father is missing. In the
two Disney feature films, both the mother and father are very wealthy,
and between 1961 and 1998, they have become more prosperous and
glamorous. The geographical distances between the parents increased:
Munich and Vienna first become Boston and Monterey, and then London and Napa Valley. A photo of Ricky Nelson on the walls of the
cabin is replaced by one of Leonardo di Caprio. A listing and discus-
186
21
Barthel, 280-81.
The girls' names Luise and Lotte were apparently derived from the
name of his companion Luiselotte Enderle.
24 Kathy Merlock Jackson, Walt Disney: A Rio-Bibliography (Westport
and London: Greenwood, 1993 ), 84.
23
DAS DOPPELTE LOTTCHEN
FRANZ A. BIRGEL
sion of all the differences are too numerous to be considered in this
paper, so it will focus on three aspects: the working mother, the father's
profession, and the opera Hansel und Gretel.
In von Baky's version, the mother (Antje Weisgerber) has a lowpaying career as an editor of the "Miinchner Illustrierten." Her job is a
necessity, in order for her to provide a modest life for herself and her
daughter. In this sense, the film reflects the historical and financial
situation of many women. Although the mother may be seen as an
emancipated career woman, she does not earn very much as is evident
from the furnishings of her apartment and Luise's question, whether
they can actually afford to take an overnight trip into the mountains.
The mother's job takes its toll: she takes work home with her at the end
of the day, and instead of playing after school, her young latch-key
daughter Lotte/Luise must clean, shop for groceries, and cook dinner
every day after school-responsibilities which make her grow up too
fast. In this sense, the film presents Kastner's interest in social environment and its effect on childhood development. At the end of the
film, the mother gives up her job in order to return to her husband in
Vienna, letting him assume the role of provider for the family. Her action is in tune with the policies of socially conservative politicians who
wanted women back in the kitchen so that men could regain their
places in the workforce, where they earned more than women. In the
first Parent Trap, the mother, as played by Maureen O'Hara, is an Irish
Boston Brahmin, a class synonymous with wealth, power, and elegance
when the film was made-at that time another Bostonian of Irish descent, John F. Kennedy, was president of the United States. She is a
society matron who does not need to work and devotes herself to charity functions, perpetuating the ideal of all 1950s' television shows that
mothers should not be employed outside the home. With her Irish temper, Maureen O'Hara appears to give a slight reprise of her role in The
Quiet Man, and there is the implication that this temper was a major
cause of the divorce. In the 1998 remake, the mother (Natasha Richardson) also comes from a wealthy family, resides in an elegant London
townhouse with her father and butler, and although she does not need
the money, she runs her own business, designing glamorous wedding
gowns.
In Das doppelte Lottchen, the father (Peter Mosbacher) is a composer and conductor at the Vienna Opera House. Through Lotte, he
becomes inspired to write a children's opera. In the early 1970s, Der
Stern presented the results of a survey regarding women's views on
men in various professions. Under a picture of Herbert von Karajan, the
printed text stated that the majority of women considered a symphony
conductor to be the ideal mate. Apparently, for American audiences,
opera is too high brow, and a conductor-composer just doesn't cut it as
a romantic ideal. In the 1961 version, the father (Brian Keith) is a rich
rancher, and the film taps into the mystique of the western genre, which
was still popular in 1961. When he goes horseback riding with Sharon
and when the family goes on the camping trip, one hears cowboy-film
music in the background. In the 1998 adaptation, the father (Dennis
Quaid) is a wealthy winegrower. Judging from articles in Food and
Wine as well as other gourmet magazines, now that California wines
have received worldwide recognition in the last decade, vintners are no
longer perceived as fanners, but have been elevated to a glamorous
social class. Considering the self-promoting tactics of the Disney Studios and product tie-ins, it's surprising that a special Parker Knoll
Vineyards Select Parent Trap 1998 Vintage was not marketed in conjunction with the film's release. Imagine Parent Trap wine in a special
plastic collector's cup available with a Big Meal at McDonalds-not in
America. Not even in France, where the allegedly wholesome, familyoriented company initially resisted serving wine at Euro-Disney.
In his hyperbolic polemic against the films of the 1950s, Gottler
refers to Das doppelte Lottchen as "a black story of depression and
loneliness, as hopeless as nightmares. "25 Although this description does
not apply to the entire film, it does characterize the dark dream sequence, which is taken directly from the novel. At a performance of
Humperdinck' s opera Hansel und Gretel that her father conducts, Lotte
meets his ladyfriend, Fraulein Gerlach. Lotte begins to identify with
Gretel who was sent into the forest and abandoned by her parents. That
night she has a nightmare in which she sees Fraulein Gerlach as the
witch of the opera, and her father saws the bed in half, separating the
twins. Later Lotte calls her a witch, like on the stage, only prettier. This
scene best exemplifies the depression, loneliness and hopelessness of
the little heroine. American audiences are undoubtedly familiar with
the fairy tale, but very few children here know the opera. During the
1950s and 1960s many parents were not yet consciously aware of the
psychologically beneficial "uses of enchantment," that is, the benefits
of reading fairy tales the way they were written, as advocated by Bruno
Bettelheim. Only in the 1970s did more accurate English translations
replace the sanitized versions of Grimm's fairy tales. Lotte's identifica-
188
25
G6ttler, 190.
189
FRANZ A. BIRGEL
DAS DOPPELTE LOTTCHEN
190
26
tion with Gretel, however, appears to support Bettelheim's critics,
since the fairy-tale opera does not symbolically resolve unconscious
anxieties but rather intensifies conscious ones. As frightening as this
nightmar~ may be for Lotte, it was apparently omitted. i~ the Disney
versions not because of its horror, but because the rewntmg of the father's role would have made this scene incongruous with the rest of the
storyline.
.
These three films finally lead into the quagmire of adaptatiOn theories, a problematic area since e:ery a~aptation is both a trans:7.renc.e
from one medium into another, mvolvmg what Bluestone calls mevitable mutations," 27 and an interpretation of an interpretation. Over the
years critics have been divided as to whether the integrity of the original source must be preserved, or whether the work must necessarily be
28
freely adapted to create a new and different work of art. Using this
dichotomy, Das doppelte Lottchen would be considered a faithful a~ap­
tation of Kastner's novel, if one assumes that the novel was wntten
first. A treatment was ready in 1942, but whether the actual script was
already finished by then is not known. Von Baky had a reputation for
remaining loyal to scripts, and as stated previously, had already collaborated with Kastner on the extravagant Munchhausen. If the final
script was completed after the novel, one would then speak ~f fidelity
to the source with regard to Das doppelte Lottchen because 1t closely
follows the novel, Kastner wrote the screenplay and spoke the voiceover commentary (as he also did, for example, in 1954 for Das
jliegende Klassenzimmer). The recurring commentary throughout the
film initially draws the viewer into the story and later· comments humorously on the plot, incorporating the author's reflections from the
book into the film. It does not function as a conscious form of alienation as in the films of Alexander Kluge and approaches what Siegfried
Kracauer calls an "obtrusive presence ... raising the issue of uncinematic adaptations."29 Von Baky and Kastner's version would then be in
For example, Maria Tatar, Off With Their Heads! Fail)' Tales and the
Culture a,[ Childhood (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1992), 78.
27 George Bluestone, Novels into Film (Berkeley and Los Angeles: U of
26
California P, 1957), 5.
28 Morris Beja, Film and Literature: An Introduction (New York and London: Longman, 1979), 82.
29 Siegfried Kracauer, Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality
(Princeton: Princeton UP, 1997), 242.
191
tune with the call for faithfulness to the nature and essence of the original text as advocated, for example, by Andre Bazin and Francois TrufJo
.
,
faut. It would then also fall mto Geoffrey Wagner's "transposition"
mode of adaptation "in which a novel is directly given on the screen,
with a minimum of apparent interference." 31 If however, one accepts
the theory that the script was written first, then one would not be dealing with a film adaptation, but rather with a novelization of the script.
The 1961 Parent Trap comes closer to a re-interpretation of the
original as defended by Bela Balazs and Rainer Werner Fassbinder,
although it lacks what the latter considers necessary: the adapterdirector's subjective, recognizably personal relationship to the text. 32
The first Disney version falls somewhere between Wagner's "commentary" mode, "where an original is taken and either purposely or inadvertently altered in some respect," and the "analogy" mode, which
"must represent a considerable departure for the sake of making another work of art." 33 In many ways, the relationship of the first Disney
film to the novel is like Akira Kurosawa's Throne ofBlood to Shakespeare's Macbeth, although, obviously, not approaching this Japanese
masterpiece aesthetically. Neither film is totally faithful to the facts: the
details of the story, the setting, the characters, the time period, and the
dialogue are changed; even the change of titles establishes a distance
between the films and their sources. But one may still speak of "'fidelity': in relation to the quality of its implicit interpretation of the
source." 34 In regard to adaptations, the two above approaches are
equally valid.
The latest version of The Parent Trap constitutes a remake of the
1961 film, rather than of a cinematic adaptation of Kastner's novel. The
first Parent Trap lists Erich Kastner in the opening credits as the author
on whose novel the film is based; in 1998 his name appears only in the
closing credits. David Swift, who wrote the script and directed the first
Disney version, updated his original screenplay together with the re30
Beja, 83.
Joy Gould Boyum, Double Exposure: Fiction into Film (New York:
Mentor, 1989), 82.
32
Rainer Werner Fassbinder, "Vorbemerkungen zu Querelle," in Rainer
Werner Fassbinder, Filme befreien den Kopf, ed. Michael Toteberg (Frankfurt/M: Fischer, 1984), 116.
33
Boyum, 82.
34
Boyum, 83.
31
DAS DOPPELTE LOrTCHE.\
192
make's director ~ancv Meyers and the producer Charles Shyer.
(Meyers and Shyer had-previously collaborated on Baby Bo?m st~ng
Diane Keaton and on the remake of The Father of the Bnde stamng
Steve Manin and Diane Keaton.)
The success of the three films is obviously due to the narrative's
continual appeal to audiences of all ages, fulfilling childh?od fant~~ies
about finding a lost sibling and adult longings for _harmomo~ts fa_mthes.
For all three films, the German term Familienfilm IS appropnate m both
senses of the word: a film for the entire family and a film about a family. An unknown irony is that the classic German children's films of the
1950s such as Das doppelce Lortchen were originally intended for
35
adults to teach them about the problems children face. In Lotte's and
Luise's journey from Munich and Vienna to B~sto~- Mo~terey,_London
and 1apa Valley, however, Kastner's pedagogtcal mtennons. hts gen~le
humor. his delightfully charming use of language. as well as the soctal
and economic ;auma experienced by German audiences in 1950 were
thrown overboard-but that's entertainment. Hollywood style.
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and Berlin: Herbig. 1986.
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Longman, 1979.
Bettelheim. Bruno. Tire Uses of Erzclwmment: The Meaning and lmportauce of
Fairy Tales. New York: Vintage, 1977.
_
_ .•
Birgel, Franz A. 'You Can Go Home Again: An Interview wtth Edgar Reitz.
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Bliersba~h. Gerhard. So griirz war die Heide . ... Weinheim and Basle: Beltz,
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Tornow. 86.
FRA'>:Z A. BIRGEL
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